


Positive Thinking

by RenaRoo



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Depression, Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23615911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenaRoo/pseuds/RenaRoo
Summary: In order to heal, Larry will have to work on being more positive. It’s a long and difficult journey.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	Positive Thinking

**Author's Note:**

> I watched Doom Patrol last year and to say I loved it would be a major understatement. But the thing that took me by surprise the most was just how meaningful Larry Trainor’s story was to me, someone who also grew up surrounded by a lot of homophobia and feels like openly living with pride is still a difficult and ongoing struggle into my adulthood. 
> 
> And with global quarantine being what it is, I’ve had a lot of strange and curious time on my hands to work on things so far as mental health is concerned. And it’s had me thinking a lot about how sometimes negativity and cyncism is a coping mechanism that’s easy to use but damaging in the long run. I tend to take that perspective away from Larry’s story rather than the way the show sometimes dismisses valid personal fears of outing and shames closeting. So this rambling story came barreling out of me. I hope it makes some sense.

Larry dismissed himself from dinner with the rest of Doom Manor’s residents.

It didn’t take much more than some dismissive words on his part, easily ignored over the rambunctious antics of Jane and Cliff, or the attempts to quell said antics by Vic and Flex. Rita was the most difficult to escape, considering Larry was her main outlet for commentary, but even she was willing to let him go when he stressed that he was tired.

He _had_ tired rather easily over the last few months, and Rita knew why even more than the others.

In some ways, it was like therapy. In other ways, it was like torture. But that had always been Larry’s dilemma. He was rarely allowed to have one over the other.

Even before the Negative Spirit melded to his very soul.

When Larry attempted to frame his fears in less selfish designs, he framed his need for more energy as being there for the others. Cliff needed to have someone counter his gutsier instincts. Jane’s sarcasm needed someone equally verbose in it. And Rita, of course, counted on Larry’s counsel more than anyone’s. But it was easier, lately, with each other, with the others like Vic and Flex and even Dorothy, young in appearance and still finding her place as she was.

Besides all that, Larry had made a promise to himself that he wasn’t going to blame his reluctance on others anymore.

Which led to the closing of the thick lead door behind Larry. The slow removal of his protective bindings as the Richter scale crackled in the decompression port. The daily walk through his metal room and his radiation proofed furniture.

It was funny to think that his room had changed so little from the minimal aesthetic it had when the Chief first offered him a place nearly half a century ago. Funny, but also uncomfortable. Like it was wrong and stupid of him, but it had been so long that it would be _weirder_ if Larry attempted to make any big changes.

He laid down on his bed and made himself comfortable, his hands rested over his chest, close to his heart.

Larry gazed at the ceiling and felt the rumbles deep in his body which let him know that the spirit was aware of what time it was.

“Hey there, buddy,” Larry said, voice low and tired. “It’s that time again. The one where I try to get stuff off my chest.” His hands tapped rather nervously over his shirt. It was light enough that the nerve damage kept the tips of his fingers from truly feeling more than the slight pressure of it. “Literally.”

For the life of him, Larry couldn’t figure out why he always started out so nervous and uncomfortable every day.

Then again, Larry had lived his entire life _nervous and uncomfortable._ It was hard to break habits formed over a century, he supposed.

“Okay, well, here goes nothing,” Larry sighed, closing his eyes and preparing himself. Idioms aside, it did not feel like _nothing_ , it felt like _everything_ every time.

“Start from the top? Positive things?” Larry asked out loud. With his eyes closed, the rumble from the negative spirit felt even stronger, more enthusiastic perhaps. “Of course, you eat those up. Alright.

”Today my azaleas began to bloom early. I got some rhododendron seeds in the mail. Chief is offering to get me a new greenhouse on the property, to expand things. Dorothy made me a flower crown. She didn’t use any of my flowers. I think she used paper and then with her, ah, powers turned them into real flowers. Usually, her using her powers is disturbing, like the whole thing with the puppets. But this was, you know, cute. I liked it. I mean it’s quicker to use a Snapchat filter, but…”

The negative spirit rumbles more abruptly. It gives Larry a sense of _warning_ or _disapproval._

“I know, I know, staying positive,” he sucks in a deep breath. It’s the sort of deep, lung filling breath that he’s only capable of thanks to the negative spirit’s possession of him. Their temporary separation reminded him of that. That, however, was an unspoken positive between them.

“I tried a new recipe, everyone seemed to enjoy it,” Larry continued. “It’s curried roasted eggplant with smoked cardamom and coconut milk.” He couldn’t resist the huff of a laugh that escaped him as a result. “Sheryl would’ve never believed it.”

There was a numbness that spread out from his chest. It was an overwhelming sense, but Larry considered it a good development.

He and the Negative Spirit both took a long time to have a response to his ex-wife being invoked that was anything other than overwhelmingly negative.

Still, it was best to trade subjects and not linger on old regrets. As natural as it was for Larry to do that.

“With all the new residents, this place has really gotten lively,” he said, arching his neck back more comfortably on the pillow. “I know I’ve let you out a few times to explore that for yourself, but you probably miss a lot of the little things.”

A gentle hum radiated out from his chest. _Positive? Affirmation?_ Larry was still deciphering the finer bits.

“It’s good for all of them,” Larry concluded. “They fit together well. Well, not fit. The whole point of this place is that fitting is…”

He trailed off, catching his own turn toward negativity long before the spirit had a chance to disrupt him.

“It’s nice, seeing how meaningful it is for Cliff and Jane to have someone…” Larry scowled and lifted up one of his hands from his chest to scrub at his face. Doom Manor was so hard to contextualize sometimes. “Not younger. She’s older than all of us. _Smaller?_ It’s nice to see Cliff and Jane both have someone _smaller_ to look out for. Daughter. Little sister. However it goes.” He lowered his hand down to his side, away from his chest where he’d more acutely feel the rumbles of the Negative Spirit’s responses. “Did I mention she made me a crown? That was nice.”

Larry lapsed into silence, his eyes unfocused as they stared at his ceiling and past it toward all the feelings and regrets of a long life.

He never felt the need to regain a sense of fatherhood like Cliff was haunted by. But he had been a father, too. He had been a father of two.

And he never saw either of them again. Never tried.

Sheryl had taken them away to a better life. Maybe she remarried, to a man who could love her the way she deserved to be love. Maybe the boys got a father who could teach them all the things about being a man that were beyond Larry’s comprehension.

It probably would have been simple enough to find out, if Larry had asked questions or reached out.

But he hadn’t. He forfeited that part of his life, just like he had forfeited so much else.

In some ways, he hoped Sheryl had told the boys he had died. That way they never grew up wondering why Larry hadn’t reached out. So they didn’t have the accurate picture of what a coward their fearless flyboy father had been.

There was no telling how much time he was prepared to spend down that path before his body jolted.

Not without warning, the Negative Spirit seized through Larry’s body with force and separated. His eyes rolled back into his head and everything went limp and dark.

When Larry woke with a gasp, he already knew what had happened, but he sat upon his bed all the same and grabbed at his head in frustration.

“Look! This is part of it!” he yelled toward his chest. His heart was racing, equal parts the Negative Spirit’s pulsing and Larry’s own anger. “I know, I know we need to work on being positive, but you got yourself paired with one of the most naturally negative sons of bitches on the planet. This wasn’t just about you, alright? We’ve talked about this before. I was _born_ negative. I’ve been looking at the dark side of things since I was seven years old and that’s not changed in a century. You _have_ to work with me here if we’re going to get anywhere.”

He was answered only by the creaks and groans of Doom Manor.

“I’m allowed to remember bad things, you know,” Larry continued to argue. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe everyone’s right and I’ve been letting them rule me. I-I _know_ you’re all right about that. But completely avoiding and ignoring negative things doesn’t keep them from existing. It’s dangerous. And it’s wrong.” His frown deepened. “I’d be more of a monster than I ever dreamed myself being, if I thought anything less than the _fact_ that the boys didn’t deserve what they had to go through. Alright? They may be old men now, but they are still my boys. And they deserved not losing everything they ever knew. And they didn’t deserve all the secondhand anxiety and paranoia from me. Those are just facts. Even if they were unavoidable.”

Finally, the Negative Spirit hummed again.

“What? That’s what you wanted from me?” Larry asked, splaying his hands against his chest to feel the rumble more. “You wanted me to say it was unavoidable? Look, how many times do I have to learn these lessons until you’re satisfied?”

There was quiet once more.

“If it’s until I _believe_ them,” Larry’s voice softened to a murmur, “we’ll be doing this every day for a _long_ time. Maybe until the day I finally die. And even _then_ it might not be enough. You know that, right? I’m pretty majorly fucked in here, and a good amount of that came with the package before you joined in, buddy.”

The hum was unmistakable that time, Larry felt it through his core.

_Okay._

“Okay,” Larry repeated, laying back down. “Stop having fits the second we go into some territory you don’t like, I’ll try to respond quicker.”

There was another unmistakable hum through his chest.

“If you’re wondering about the conversation with Rita about Flex, then you probably were already aware of most of it,” Larry snorted. “I’m coming up on one hundred years old, I don’t want to repeat what I said to my best friend about someone else’s quads.” He tossed his head a little from side to side and then sighed. “They are nice, though. And admitting it out loud didn’t light me on fire, so, who knows. Maybe being gay does get easier with practice.”

That seemed to satisfy the spirit, and it did Larry, too.

Small victories — victories so small that a previous version of himself might have argued they weren’t worth celebrating, not for the amount of time it took for him to get to that point. But he felt the accomplishment all the same.

There were so many regrets and so much fear in his life that was still there, and he still didn’t believe that erasing all of it was the fully responsible or realistic thing to do.

But he could make himself lighter, in whatever small increments he could. And that was surely worth the battle alone.


End file.
